College of Visual and Performing Arts Undergoes Reorganization

Quick Facts

Alice Burmeister is the new associate dean of the Department of Art and Design. Tom Stanley will chair the Department of Fine Art. Chad Dresbach will head the Department of Design.

Tom Stanley

Chad Dresbach

ROCK HILL, S.C. - A recently announced reorganization within the College of Visual and Performing Arts will redefine the position of associate dean and separate the Department of Art and Design into two departments.

The reorganization includes the appointment of Alice Burmeister, the interim chair of the Department of Art and Design, to the position of associate dean. She will move to the job this summer to focus mostly on curriculum and student issues. To help centralize student programs, the director of student services and the director of graduate programs will now report to the associate dean.

The reorganization also will allow art and design faculty members to work in more balanced departments in regard to the number of majors and financial resources and to contribute to student learning and development more effectively, said Elizabeth Patenaude, dean of the college. The new fine art department, to be chaired by Tom Stanley, director of Winthrop Galleries, will have 16 faculty members and 312 majors. The design department, chaired by Chad Dresbach, will contain seven faculty members and 201 majors. The other two departments in the college, music (17 faculty and 203 majors) and theatre/dance (nine faculty and 175 majors), will remain unchanged.

Tom Moore, vice president for academic affairs, said there are still details to work out during the transition, and Patenaude, Burmeister and the four department chairs will work together towards a July 1 reorganization.

Burmeister was selected for the position because of her administrative experience and attention to student development. She joined the Winthrop faculty in 1997 and has been awarded the “Outstanding Junior Professor” and “Faculty Student Life Award.” An associate professor of art, she specializes in the arts of Africa, the Americas, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian and Native American art. She has been the recipient of more than 12 research grants and fellowships and holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Since 1990, Stanley has served as the first director of the Winthrop University Galleries. He will continue to oversee the Galleries in his new role as department chair and will work with a new assistant or associate director of the Galleries. He has held faculty positions at Arkansas College and Barry University, and has served director of the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, N.C. A regularly exhibiting artist and associate professor of art, Stanley has worked until now to organize and bring diverse exhibition programs to the university and community at large. He has a master's degree in applied art history and another master's degree in painting, both from the University of South Carolina.

Dresbach, an associate professor of visual communication design, has worked at Winthrop since 1995. He earned a master's degree in fine arts from Kent State University and is the recipient of a 1995 “Marlite” Interior Design Award and “Kichler” Interior Design Award and a 1994 Print Regional Design Annual Award of Excellence.